Re'eh: Redeemed Hearts, Open Hands

0:00So let's pray. Amina Shabbash Shamayan, we bless and exalt you. We thank you so much for this time together as a family to glean from you to learn, to walk, and to understand how to walk in and keep your midst. We thank you for that. We thank you that everything you are doing in our congregation, in our midst. We thank you for the the blessings that that unfold on our lives and for all the lessons we learn as we walk in you. And we thank you for the opportunity to bless others and to bless each other in Yeshua's name. Well, again, Shabbat shalom everybody. So last week we talked about the paradox of prosperity. Now I didn't call it that, but that's really what it was. Prosperity is a blessing. Everyone reaches out for it. I know there's one of two two of you that don't, but everyone reaches out for it. But Moshe warned us that if it's not governed by yurat adonai and hopma wisdom that is the reverence of god as the beginning of all wisdom it can become a curse. And this week in re we see the blessing and the curse that is set before us. When prosperity deceives the heart this is what happens. One might say

1:37my own power and the might of my hand produce this wealth. So tell me if you think that is one of these three. Is it pride? Is it greed? Or is it fear? My hand enable me to produce all this wealth. Which one? >> Pride. Good. How about this one? It is all mine. Mine. Mine. Which one is that? >> I know I sound like a child, but I'm used to that. So, how about this one? I want more. I want more. It's not enough. I want more. >> Greed. That's great. How about this one? But, but what if I don't have enough to give? What if I don't have enough? What if I won't have enough? Which one is that? >> Fear. >> Fear. Exactly. Okay, good. You got it. 100%. Great job. You passed. We can all go home now. Okay. But first, this week's Torah portion introduces another paradox. This one is called the paradox of poverty. You ever heard this one before? Well, the Torah never romanticizes poverty. Judaism never did either. Neither should we. When we think about the needy, the poverty in the world, yet the Torah seems to present us with this contradiction. Listen carefully to this.

3:23However, there shall be no needy among you, the Torah says. But then a few verses later, we notice this kilo mvar. For the needy will never cease to be in the land. Well, which one is it? There will be no needy among us or there will always be needy. Which one is it? We might ask the Torah. Well, we all have opinions. The rabbis and the scholars in the world have debated this for centuries, wrestled with this. But I believe as we look at it that Moshe is calling our attention to two realities. One of them is God's vision. Think about Re God's vision. The other is our world as it exists today. One is the ideal. The other is current reality. So, where are we standing is the question. >> I'm not going to resolve that for you. Prosperity without compassion >> corrupts the prosperous. We learned that last week. While poverty without justice degrades the poor >> because if there are needy among us, then that is an injustice. That is not right. There's something wrong with that. It's broken. There is enough resources in the world to feed all these people. It's just not distributed that way, is it? But today, we're going to

5:22talk about the Torah. What is the Torah saying? Because the Torah refuses to accept either one of these. doesn't want to accept the greedy or the corruption of the wealthy and it doesn't want to accept the fact that we could just be okay with the poor being among us and not doing anything about it. So Moshe starts to begin with the talk here and he links the injustice of poverty not so much with the economic circumstances which is important but rather with the heart. Listen to this of what he says.

6:13You are not to harden your heart or shut your hand against your needy brother or sister. So notice there what we have. Don't harden your heart. And then he says this, keep a toah teeth at yadka. Rather you must surely open your hand to him. shut your hand or open your hand. Moshe is bringing us to where God is. What is God doing? Is he shutting his hand or is he opening his hand? Are we walking in the mitzvot or are we shutting off to the mitzvot? It's not magic, but God shows us what it really is. >> It's the choice we have to walk in him or not. So, it all begins with the heart. We see it there. Long before the hand shuts, something is already hardened and calcified in the heart. The Exodus didn't end at the Red Sea, but rather it was the beginning of our spiritual formation. So think about it as the very beginning of your faith in Yeshua was your crossing of the Red Sea and that was the very beginning of your faith formation all the way back there and for some of us tomorrow but that's what it is. Consider the Exodus frame today. I want you to consider this because it's all over our Torah portion today. Hashem saw

8:07their affliction. He sees our affliction. Hashem heard the cry of the oppressed. He stretched out his mighty hand has to be open, right? And redeem them. And now listen to what he commands us, his people. When the indentured servant was released in the schmita, the seventh year, Moshe says, "When you set him free, you are not to send him away." Rayakam, that's empty-handed. No, you are to surely provide provision for him from your flock, from your threshing floor, and from your wine press. That's all our resources, right? Don't send them away empty-handed. This is the principle here. We have a setting free of one who is being re acclimated, introduced into society. We want to give them a blessing. But think about the familiarity of this here. Did we go out of Egypt empty-handed? No. We went out with a high hand and an outstretched arm. That God gave us gifts as we went out of there, right? He enabled us to plunder our enemies at that time. But the idea is that God didn't take us from our emptiness and fail to open up his hand. You must not mistreat any widow or orphan. If you mistreat them in any way and they

9:46cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry. Notice that the most vulnerable people, the most marginalized people on the earth, forget about politics for a moment. Just think about these people that are crushed and that they have favor with God like no other. They have that potential to cry out against anybody who is oppressing them. But I want you to hear the pattern today. Hear the pattern. God hears the cries. Now his people must hear the cries of others. God opens his hand. Now his people must open up their hand. This is unmistakable. Amuna faith walk with God. And it's really rudimentary. But sometimes I think we may focus on some other aspects of it. Are we theologically correct and all that? That's important. But this here is Torah. This is how we keep the commandments from walking in it together collectively because we can keep the commandments much better collectively, right? There's more of us to do it. God sees that. strengths and weaknesses together, lifting each other up when someone else has fallen down, but we're all responsible and for each other. So, we see that the people who were

11:19redeemed that experienced redemption are now to imitate the redeemer. That's very clear. Talk about that, right? Having the mind of Messiah, it's the same. We want to imitate our redeemer, our God, Hashem, Messiah Yeshua, who is the image of the living God, the reflection of God in every way. But the Exodus was never merely about leaving Egypt, but rather it was about leaving Egypt behind forever. That's why the Torah says, "Don't ever go back there again." Well, spiritually you shouldn't because that's bondage. We should press forward and ensure that no one else is remaining in bondage. That's our ministry. And I know it looks different for some of us, but it's our ministry. We have that shared calling and the responsibility to distribute shared blessing to each other. So, it was all about learning the heart of the God who redeemed us. But what does that kind of heart look like when it encounters human need? See, that's the next question. Is it visible in the world? Is it visible in our circles, in our opportunities? And the answer is one Hebrew word. We said it earlier. Zadaka. Zadaka. That's

12:53it, right? That's the word justice, righteousness. That's why we call very righteous souls zadikim, righteous ones. But when we think about zodaka, many English Bibles, I believe, do not do it justice. They say charity. Okay, that's fine as a loose definition. But the word is too small. It shrinks it. Charity is often voluntary, but rather zedaka is not. It's commanded from God because it's justice in action. It's the way that people see Messiah and me and you. It's the way that we reflect God's attributes. It's the way that we share his character. It's the way we are enjoined to each other as one people identifiable not just by what we wear that's ritual, but how we act in the world. And this is not a moral exceptionalism. Although there's a high moral calling here. This is a spiritual life formation that is available to you and to me and to all of us today to share in that. So righteousness puts us all into action and perspective. The Torah is not merely calling us to feel compassion and empathy. That's important. But rather to do something about it. that commands us to act in the name of our God

14:23with wisdom grounded right together. Listen again to Moshe's words here. You must surely open your hand to your brother and sister, to your needy and poor in your land. you must surely open it. Rabbi Jill Jacobs, who's a uh a thought leader in the Jewish world, who wrote the book There Shall Be No needy, a wonderful book, she makes this important contribution. She says that the Torah frequently, and we see it in this week's Torah portion, joins together the words ani and eon. Ani and Evion. And it's not that we want to have strict categories. Is it an or is it? No, it's the point that these are the afflicted. These are people with real needs. And we want to identify what that need is. Not give them give them need number 10 when they need need number one or two, right? want to know what that need is. What questions are they asking? What are they crying out for? And that's the point. So it reminds us that those who suffer out there are never abstractions. They are not an abstract idea. But there are people whose dignity has been diminished. >> They've been crushed. And it's all about restoring dignity.

16:05That's what zodaka justice is. It's restoring one's dignity in the world. Whatever it takes to restore their dignity spiritually, physically to meet that need. Mymonades the Rambam takes this a step further. He says this. He teaches that the highest form of zodaka is not the largest or the anonymous gift like the one where you give somebody and nobody knows who gave it. That's really cool, right? I mean, it's like whoa, you know, that's a blessing from God. But no, he he actually says it's to strengthen your brothers or your sister's hand through some kind of a gift or a loan or a teaching skill. Why? So that person can become self- sustaining. So they're no longer dependent on another human being to survive. Although we still all need each other, but this is the point of interdependence when we think about lifting our brother up to restore their dignity is what the Rambom says. So that they can stand up on their own. This is important. Whatever skills and gifts you have, give them away freely. Teach them, show people the way if it's answering their immediate need, of course. Right? So,

17:34the goal is restoration. The Torah portion says to lift up another human being and so that they could stand on their own two feet. And I don't mean just standing upright physically. That's important. But also their dignity when their dignity is bent and damaged to bring them up out of that. That's the Torah. And suddenly Dvarim starts to make sense. Wow. This is a whole theology here. This is a whole spiritual formation of what this covenant really looks like and who we are and our identity in that. It starts to become exceedingly clear because we all share this responsibility. It's not like these people over here do it and those people don't. No, we all do it in our own way. And this is theim here. The release of debts. Who wants to be debtree? Raise your hand. Well, if you're a finance person, sometimes you do use leverage a little bit, but we're not talking about that. But being debtree. Yes. Yes. How about the release of of the indentured servants and giving them provision, providing someone with that need when based on the need at the time? How about leaving the corners of the field for the ani and

18:56the eon to glean? What does that mean to leave? Leave that for them, right? Don't try to hoard everything, but rather be generous, right? Scrape off the edges and and and pile it up. Give it to him. How about providing for the levy, the Levite, who had no inheritance of his own because his inheritance was from God. But God said, "Hey, you feed the Levite." He didn't say, "I'm going to constantly feed the Levite with ravens." Although he could do that, right? But he still said you and I do that in that time. But you see the principle, right? Today most live em live in houses and you know have a car and stuff. But you get it. You get the point. Carry for the widow. The widowerower the widowerower the orphan and the sojourer the g these are all the same and they are not isolated commandments. This is the the theology of Devim Deuteronomy. This is our covenant with our God. And this is universal for us to keep these. A society where the desolate are not discarded, but rather they are redeemed. That's God's vision for us. Restoration. a society where blessing continues to flow for those who call on him

20:33and that are needy. Because God's people refuse to let another brother or sister remain crushed under their own impression, under the weight of their affliction. See, God says, "No, pull them out from under that. You go do that and I will empower you to do that. You can even go in my name, right? Tell them I sent you, right? And then you become an agent of God. And that's what we are. That's it. So where redeemed hearts become open hands. That's the world that God envisions. and where open hands begin restoring the dignity of those who have been brought very low into that low place and that's the place where God says reach out and bring them to me and so from there we we move from the world that is today we talked about the olam hazaha the world as it is to the world that God envisions the vision of our God and a see see to it that you you see the blessing and the curse. Well, this is the blessing. This is what God envisions and the hope of the prophet Isaiah as he's bringing it to us this week. The Torah gives us the blueprint for how to behave. It's it's not it's not across the sea or in the sky. This is very very

22:15doable. We can do this. It's just a matter of focusing on it. being intentional. But then the question becomes who or how can one form a people like this? >> Who can do that? Well, that's where the Bessor, the good news of Yeshua comes in because that's our specialty. That is our blessing, our contribution of how God has made a way for human hearts to be softened. But not only softened from this hardness, but transformed. The transformation of our hearts should place us on the cutting edge of God's vision. That could be aspirational or it can be reality. now, right? It's okay. If you're a baseball player, you might say, "I'm going to bat 400 this year. Maybe you bat 325 or 285." Actually, they don't even use batting averages anymore. I don't they use like all the other stuff, but when I was a kid, it was simple. It's not simple anymore. All these stats, but you get it. But the Baora opens it all up. It opens it up for us to see how is the best linked to this idea of there shall be no needy. How does that come together? And our answer to that is the crucified and risen Messiah has come

23:57>> and he lives in you or he can live in you because God is reconciling humanity to himself to envision a day where there shall be no needy anymore. That's what we represent. He is restoring his covenant people to their calling. He is welcoming the nations into the hope of Israel. Many of you represent that. Isaiah talked about that today in verse 5, didn't he? The writing of his Torah is written on human hearts. He is forming a people who bear his character in the world. This formation is ancient. It began long ago, but now we have the ability to receive it in a way that we never have before. And that's what puts us on the cutting edge spiritually because we can do that now. It's the transformed heart becomes visible when people begin to see how we treat the people that are made in the image of God. That's how they see the transformed heart. Not because you know more Bible verses than somebody else or because you are theologically superior. Although these are pretty cool and pretty important to know, right? But it's really about what do we do in the trenches? What are we doing when when God is

25:40saying, "You're my agent. Go and I'm with you." And this is exactly what Luke wants us to see. You see, the followers of Yeshua led this calling. They didn't merely proclaim the kingdom, but they walked in this idea of there shall be no needy. They walked in that. See, that was their framework. They didn't think about it through our current economics and social system today and our polarization of politics. They saw it through Torah. When they saw it, they saw it very clearly. Listen to Kea here, Peter, when he approaches one who is crippled at the beautiful gates. Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Messiah Yeshua of Nater, get up and walk. We celebrate the miracle. It's a miracle. It authenticates Yeshua. Yes. Yes. Rightly so. But think about what Kea really did there. Think about it. That day the greatest need of that crippled man was not silver and gold. It was not money although he needed that. Rather it was the ability to walk. Why? Because the ability to walk could enable his dignity to be restored because he stand upright before his God

27:26like everybody else and praise his God like everybody else upright and so that he could work eventually and potentially sustain himself in a more positive way. His dignity restored. That's what Kea did in the name of Messiah Yeshua. upright. But isn't that very close to what Mymones Rambam later described? The highest form of zodaka strengthens a person's hand so that they are no longer reliant on everybody else to care for them if possible. That's what Ron Bomb was talking about, restoration, restoring them. And that's exactly and precisely what Kea did as he brought the Baser, the good news of Yeshua to him. So that speaks volumes to us of allowing the Holy Spirit to identify the immediate need rather than proceeding in what we thought think they ought to need. Kea restored the man in the name of Yeshua. And then Luke gives us this other image that's very powerful. The early Acts community forming together. He says this, "There was not a needy person among them." Wow. That echoes Devoreim Deuteronomy, doesn't it? There was not a needy person among them. The early messianic community

29:16He's envisioning God's vision. Luke is looking at it and saying Deuteronomy is becoming a reality here. And then notice something else. When Shaul, Paul met with the other apostles in Jerusalem to clarify their missional purpose. They only gave him this one one request. Do you remember what they said when he said, "Yeah, I'm going to go to the and you go ahead and go to the the Udoi, the the people of Judea." He said this, "They asked only that we remember the needy, the Evong, the very thing I was eager to do." Right? You see how these click together? They come together. The baser, the good news of Yeshua provides for us everything we need to walk in our calling and spiritual formation. The proclamation of Messiah, the remembrance of the needy, these are one. They belong together from the very beginning from bees beyond that. They come together and Messiah inaugurates the vision of God here for us today. But then we are called to live within it. So as we think about this word today and it really touches my heart. We think about the season we're in. We're going into alul already. And when Luke wrote that, that there was

31:04not a needy person among them, I sometimes wonder, was he describing what he saw or was he quietly telling us the world that Moshe envisioned was becoming a reality now? Like we have this opportunity to step into this right now. Which one was it? And if it is true that he saw it as our potential reality, then perhaps it is not simply something we should just admire. Oh, look at that. I'm going to put that scripture as a trophy on my wall. Does anybody do that? It's probably a good idea. It says write it on their your doorpost in your house or whatever. but rather it it's inviting us to to step into it. And so today as as we proceed from here and you walk through our ministry fair opportunities, I want you to think of it in that light. Think of it as not as where I can serve. Although, yeah, these are places you can definitely serve, but rather where is God calling me to bear his character and reach out my hand to those that are in need, either around me, there shall be no need, or in the area, whatever it is that I'm doing, as minuscule as it may seem, can make a big ripple effect in the kingdom of God.

32:44that service of the heart that you bring. It's not just volunteering. Where can I volunteer my time? You know, you can volunteer anywhere. It's good to volunteer. But this is true avoda, worship, true service before God, which transcends volunteerism. Where can I serve? Where can I give? And by the way, >> in Judaism, even the poor are commanded to give out of their poverty. We see that with the widow's might. That's not to condemn anybody. That's the point is is that this is a universal command, right, of God saying because because this is the heart of God. This is the character of God. This is who God is. And we all have something to give. And it's way more blessed to give than to receive. Although it's good to receive, too. Where can I strengthen another person's hand in my midst as I walk through this ministry fair? Because every time the hungry are fed, every time the lonely find community, every time dignity is restored, the world that Moshe envisioned becomes more visible. And that's where they see Messiah. That's where they see God's vision becoming reality. That is Zadaka. That is justice. Justice

34:13that answers the injustice and does something about it. And that is our calling. And we're blessed in that. So may the Ruach Hakodesesh continue to open up our hearts and may our hands be wide open until the world that Moshe envisioned becomes increasingly visible. And it is visible here right now. So step into it. Let's prayash. and we bless and sanctify you and we exalt your name. We thank you so much for the good news of Yeshua. We thank you Yeshua for everything you've done for us to set us free from every form of oppression, from every form of bondage that we know that we can walk in you and receive perpetual blessing. Lord, give us eyes to see the needs. Touch our hearts and soften them. alleviate our fears, Lord God, that we'd walk in this spirit of power today. As the Torah portion says, in Yeshua's name, I pray. >> Shabbat shalom, everybody. >> [applause]